Monday, March 24, 2008

On sticking your nose into local planning where it's not wanted

On sticking your nose into local planning where it's not wanted

Oh Lordy, not-mad-at-all Kim Jong-Il's back.

Once again, the leader of the Korean People's Military-First Self-Determinist Revolution is offering his faultless on-the-spot guidance to the good people of Weymouth and Portland over the building of a relief road for the town - known variously as the Brown Route or the Orange Route (pay attention, top laughs depend on you knowing this) - which has sat, mouldering, on a drawing board at County Hall in Dorchester since just before the D-Day landings.

Regular readers will remember that the Dear Leader has already offered his miraculous Juche-based advice to the town over its plans to piss £150m away on a new theatre complex, offering, instead a 300-foot statue of Kylie Minogue towering over the harbour (undraped for preference) as a landmark offering hope, civic pride and nipples like chapel hat pegs.

And did the Dorset Echo print it? BLAM – Saturday's Letter of the Day, and rather satisfying to see them enter into the spirit of things too with a picture of an orange-skinned celebrity.

Restoring the gags ruthlessly hacked out by Echo sub-editors:

Dear The Dorset Echo

I am grateful to the people of this fine port of Weymouth for the positive reaction my plan for the Pavilion site has produced. I can already see in my mind's eye - as must many readers of your excellent publication - the 300 foot statue of Kylie Minogue rising above the harbour, an inspiration to the people of our Olympic town in these uncertain days.

"Mr Kim!" people say as they stop me in the street, "Mr Kim! We bow before your massive intellect and cannot wait to pay the £3.00 fee to see panoramic views of the town from the platform in Giant Kylie's head. Have you - we beg - got anything to say over the Relief Road?"

Yes. Yes I have.

The problem with the Weymouth Relief Road is this: it is called The Weymouth Relief Road. A name that hardly brings inspiration to the hard-working Weymouth proletariat. Worse is the County Council's "Brown Route" designation. Brown can only be associated with one thing, and frankly, I refuse to travel on any roadway named after something that's come out of a dog's bottom. There's enough of that on the Rodwell Trail as it is.

Change the name, I say, and you change the thing. This new road will be the first thing that visitors will see as they enter the Borough, so it is essential to make this initial impression count. The name has to reflect our town, our hopes, dreams and aspirations.

So, ask yourselves - what's Weymouth famous for?

- Black Death Boulevard

- Mad King George Link

- That Elton John Impersonator Off The Telly Avenue

- Don't Pull Over In Littlemoor Or They'll Have Your Car Up On Bricks Before You Know It Road

The nature reserve and park and ride schemes at the top of the Ridgeway would be replaced with a 300-foot floodlit statue of Kylie's one-time beau Jason Donovan standing sentinel over the town, beckoning to the Antipodean songbird as she poses gracefully on the harbour-side, a reminder to all that we can't watch Neighbours since it switched over to Five.

Or, having once seen orange-skinned TV celebrity David 'The Duke' Dickinson in Weymouth, perhaps "the Orange Route" will do after all. We can make it "cheap as chips"!

There's no point hanging around waiting for this never-ending, namby-pamby inquiry process to be over and done with. You - the brave proletariat of this fine town - should rise up with me as your leader, grab your shovels and wheelbarrows and set to work on the road's construction immediately. There'll be neither pay nor time off, but I shall spare the floggings. It is for the greater good. Trust me.

Yours etc,

Mr KimSecret Bunker, Castletown

Coming soon: The Dear Leader stands for electoral office, and offers his advice to the naked, thrusting capital of the Thames Valley.

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